Innocent Visa Applicants Applying for Nonimmigrant and Immigrant Waivers

Posted on 

With the dramatic upsurge in consular decisions to permanently bar visa applicants from the United States, the question of applying for an immigrant or nonimmigrant waiver has become more and more acute.  Many immigration lawyers will advise to just accept the decision, admit that you were wrong, say you are sorry, and apply for the waiver. They say that your chances of receiving the waiver will be increased if you admit your guilt and express remorse, even if you did not do anything wrong. But what if you are not “guilty”?  What if you did not commit a material misrepresentation (Section 212(a)(6)(C)(i))? Or engage in alien smuggling (Section 212(a)(6)(E))? Or commit a crime of moral turpitude (Section 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(I))?  Should you admit you were wrong? Of course not. There are legal mechanisms to challenge such lifechanging decisions, such as a Request for Reconsideration.  Sometimes, the supervisor of the consular officer or…

Read more

Immigrant Waivers – New Hope for the Refused?

Posted on 

Previously, USCIS overseas offices had responsibility for reviewing I-601 immigrant waiver applications. This led to inconsistent adjudications among various overseas offices and extreme variations in processing times.  We first discussed the patent unfairness of this system on this blog back in November 2011.  To remedy these problems, in June 2012 USCIS centralized the processing of I-601 waivers at the Nebraska Service Center in the United States.  The impact can now be seen, and should give those who had been previously denied by a USCIS overseas office hope. As noted in our 2011 blog, the approval rates at certain USCIS overseas offices were dismal at best.  For example, in Accra, Ghana, which had jurisdiction and reviewed waiver applications from numerous countries in Africa, its approval rate in 2010 was 22%.  The Rome USCIS Office had an approval rate of 25%.  Moscow and Athens hovered around 40%.  Contrast that with the approval…

Read more

No Statute of Limitations on Visa Application Lies

Posted on 

Let’s say you had a run-in with the law a long time ago. As a result, you were convicted of fraud. But it happened so long ago that you do not give much thought to it. So when you applied for a visa a few years back to visit your daughter and her children in the US, you did not indicate the conviction in the visa application form. You received the visa and used it to go to the US several times. You didn’t give much thought to it, until you decided to immigrate with your daughter’s help, and you had to obtain a police certificate. The police certificate indicated the conviction, but you were not worried because you had consulted a lawyer, who told you that although the conviction was for a crime of moral turpitude and did not qualify for the petty offense exception, a waiver was available….

Read more